LÉON BAKST (1866-1924)

This costume design of a man in an embroidered shirt and red boots was for a character in the unrealized 1917 production of the opera Sadko. Bakst also used this design with slightly different colors and shirt embroidery for the character 'Le bouffon russe' colloquially known as 'Innocent Ivan' in the 1921 production of La Belle au Bois dormant [The Sleeping Princess] as seen in M. de Brunoff (ed.), L’oeuvre de Léon Bakst pour la Belle aux Bois Dormant, Paris, 1922, pl. 24, which is now held in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
We are grateful to Elena Bespalova, art historian and researcher, for her assistance with cataloging lots 639-641, 643-645 and 653-655.